Weird game design idea

[AnyaTheBlue]

This is sort of inspired by thoughts about Author and Director stance, as well as Rune and something Ron mentioned about Trollbabe being about 'her story'.

There are plenty of documented cases of people using assistant GMs to run NPCs in big combats, or of a group of GMs divying up a world geographically.

My thought is that you could take the normal sort of Player Group and turn it around.  Instead of one GM doing all the scene setting with a group of players, you could have a single player, controlling a 'main game character' who would have to have a certain set of known, stated goals, or a given fate, or something like that.

The rest of the players would play 'the rest of the world' in some fashion, creating and running NPCs, opponents, and whatnot, using the kind of Director Stance that the GM usually has.

I think there's a game in here somewhere.

What do you think?

[Mark Johnson]

Must be something in the air.  Check out these threads.  

Smacked Upside the Head with a Guitar

an approach to multiple simultaneous GMs

WTF? - A Game of Competitive Storytelling.

Is this something like what you have in mind?  How do your ideas differ?

[Daniel Solis]

Here's a link directly to the WTF? page. I've yet to actually playtest this game, but it seems like a fairly usable concept. I don't see why it can't be done, anyway. :)

[Jonathan Walton]

Do it.  Better yet, somebody should do it in D20, just for kicks :)

Otherwise, you'll have to wait until I get time to work on We Regret to Inform You the Gamemaster is Dead...

[damion]

Do it.  Better yet, somebody should do it in D20, just for kicks :)

That's...just...wrong...

I would like to see a serious take though.

[Daniel Solis]

Define "serious." Do you mean sincere attempt at making a playable game with the usual player/GM roles reversed?

[AnyaTheBlue]

Gobi (and everybody),

Thanks for the WTF pointer -- it covers almost everything I was thinking about (as near as I can tell -- I haven't read it in depth yet).

I think it might be interesting, actually, to formalize the roles of the opponents, perhaps using some sort of token or points to control what sort of opponent they can be (ie, Nemesis, Enemy Horde, Force of Nature, or whatever) or what or how they can interfere (kind of like Baron Munchausen)

It might be useful to adopt some sort of point scoring, a la Rune.

I can see lots of possible directions to take this, although I dunno if they're playable...

[Jonathan Walton]

I can see lots of possible directions to take this, although I dunno if they're playable...

Ah, come on.  Everything is playable.  It's all about how sigificant an experience results from play.  At worst, you'd end up with a Deconstructionist/Concept/Anti-Game, which would be more fun to think about than actually play.  But I think most of the things you could do with this kind of thing would all work.

Heck, if you want to just try it out, play some Universalis where one player is in charge of a character and has no other game-altering powers.

[Andrew Martin]

My thought is that you could take the normal sort of Player Group and turn it around.  Instead of one GM doing all the scene setting with a group of players, you could have a single player, controlling a 'main game character' who would have to have a certain set of known, stated goals, or a given fate, or something like that.

The rest of the players would play 'the rest of the world' in some fashion, creating and running NPCs, opponents, and whatnot, using the kind of Director Stance that the GM usually has.

Sort of like some movies, where the gods observe the world and the hero, placing their counters against the hero or providing assistance, while being ultra-polite to each other in Olympus?